Make Up Sex

There are countless Facebook third party applications offering all sorts of quizzes so people can determine important things such as: "What Sex and the City character are you?" and "Who were you in a past life?" and "What kind of lover are you?" and "What kama sutra position are you?"

There should be one for "What kind of fighter are you?"

I once dated a guy who fought dirty. He didn't pull his punches, and he hit below the belt.

No matter how minor and trivial the disagreement, he took that as license to cross all manner of lines that should NEVER be crossed and let fly personal insults with breathtaking ugliness.

I likened him to Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. As James M. Barrie said, Tink isn't a BAD fairy. She is just so tiny she can only hold one emotion at a time. Either she's very good or she's very bad.

When this guy was anything less than completely happy, he was MEAN. He couldn't hold two contradictory emotions at the same time. He couldn't be angry about a particular thing while remembering that he cares for the person who made him angry. He lacked the sense of object permanence that human beings learn as infants - the realization that things still exist even when not in their immediate line of sight. So when he was angry he was completely hateful and there wasn't room for the awareness that he didn't actually want the relationship to end, and that perhaps in an hour, or a day, or a week, he might regret his words and actions and wish that he could take it all back. But he was hardly Tinker Bell-sized, so what might be acceptable for her, isn't for him.

He tried to excuse himself by saying that he just doesn't like to fight, and that the solution was simply not to ever fight.

I don't have the words to express how STUPID that is.

Fighting is part of the human condition. We fight with everybody - our colleagues, our family, our closest friends, our lovers, even ourselves. The only thing that matters then, is HOW we fight.

A good friend was just dumped by her boyfriend. It came as a complete surprise to her. Yes, they had had a fight the day before, but it wasn't anything that fell outside the acceptable and normal boundaries of a healthy, loving relationship.

Apparently, her newly minted ex doesn't like to fight. Who does? But again, it's HOW people fight that can make all the difference. Is it possible to discuss even the thorniest issues while still exercising kindness, care and simple decency? Without simply ending the relationship? Of course it is. And then there's the make up sex which is always fun and almost an excuse to pick a fight in the first place. This should be common knowledge. But apparently, it isn't.

My friend's ex is looking for the kind of relationship in which disagreements never happen. I suggest finding a woman of the blow-up variety. But the sex (make up or otherwise) won't be nearly as fun.

My two cents.